In Monday's episode of Anderson talks to two pageant moms about the effect these pageants have on their daughters. One of the pageant mothers, Wendy Dickey, thinks nothing of dressing her three-year-old daughter in a "Pretty Woman" type outfit. Later in the episode one mother discusses finding racy panties in a store targeted towards young girls. It would appear that the pageant mothers and society are trying to make children (even at the age of three) much older and sexualized than they need to be. It's interesting considering how women are supposed to be seen as younger through plastic surgery or products that imply being young (Maybelline's Baby Lips Lip Balm).
The website includes clips from the episode, one girl's story of her positive pageant experience and discusses the book Cinderella Ate My Daughter. In the book Peggy Orenstein discusses how self-image affects young girls and what steps parents can take to help their daughters.
http://www.andersoncooper.com/episodes/are-little-girls-growing-up-too-fast/
you make an interesting point regarding how we want girls to grow up so fast yet want women to stay young forever. might i go so far to say that, based on the way women are constructed in popular culture, we are never good enough--either too young or too old. and this certainly revolves around sexuality, which adds another layer of disturbing onto your observation.
ReplyDeleteYes, that is a great point. Little girls do want to grow up fast. They want to dress and act like big girls. Then once they do grow up, they want to be young again. My 24 year old daughter was just like that. She wanted to be a teenager so fast however I did keep some controls on her, as best I could! But now that she is 24 and a mom, she wishes she could go back to her younger years when life was so simple.
ReplyDeleteAnd being 52 myself, I look back at my 20's and 30's and even 40's now and wish I could recapture those days as we, as women, are treated differently as we age. Ageism...a term I learned about in my Women's Studies class. I never thought it would apply to me! lol
Jessi,
ReplyDeleteI saw one of those pageant shows one night while flipping channels and was appalled at how the mothers were treating these little girls. I think these mothers must have "issues" they are trying to fulfill through their daughters. Their whole family life is about going to pageants and I hate to think of the money they spend. Lynette said it well, our girls grow up fast enough on their own, we don't need to push them. The focus on body image is forced on us by society, we don't need mothers to send that message, too.
I have also seen clips and such of these shows and they make me sick- literally! These little girls when asked about if they like what they are doing more often than not say they would rather be doing something else or that they do it FOR their moms. This is also what gets me ill; their mothers see this footage and they still keep them in the contests! The media is so saturated already with over-sexualized images of girls that these girls are taught, often at the ages of 3,4, or 5 that this is what the world / being a woman is like and that they should be the same. As Tajuana said, we certainly don't need mothers pushing girls in the negative direction that unfortunately they will be subjected to either way.
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